> If you're paying for something, the concept of an "account" has to exist in order to record the payment against. If you're paying for something, that generally transfers a chunk of personal information for anti-fraud purposes. Given that, an email is not a huge ask, and is very useful for e.g. billing reminders. It doesn't have to be a spam thing and GDPR is gradually cracking down on that.

Now that makes little sense. Why do I care about how a site keeps records of payments? You can create an account on the backend,plenty of sites already allow for guest check outs with no email asked so I don't get what you're on about. Email is a humongous ask for me. I will even pay double to avoid that. No, it is not useful for payment reminders,those are spammy to me. This is why you need to let people opt in! I don't want to give you any email addresses. You will decide some day how valuable your collection of emails and pictures is and you will sale it to the highesr bidder. Even if it is a paid service how can I know you won't get greedy. Also wake up please! Assume email does not exist unless you need to tell users something,and they give consent. You do not need email to host images. I do not wish to use a burner email for your lack of consideration for my consent. I do not wish to receive emails from an image host. If you need email for antifraud you're screwing it up already and I would rather just use AD supported free services because at least they are not tracking me by my email -- a very valuable datapoint for trackers. Once you have my email you can do micro-targeting very easily and basically figure out all there is to know about me. You do not need people's email unless they say they want you to email them. Heck, even if I want your reminders, email is the last way I want to use. Send me login/push notifications. I do not want to expose yet another site to account take over in the event my email is compromised. I seen people lose a lot of moneu because criminals phished their email. If I am paying you with btc, I do not wish to have any billing reminders or anything tracing the transaction to my email! Trust me,please! You do not need email unless you really and specifically with user consent (after a warning dialog) have a reason to use it. Please stop. Not one more decade of ignorance with respect to this subject.

Oh and yeah, I need a free tier but so does OP. That's how you get users. The more you have free tier users, the more users convert to paying and the more sustainable the service becomes.